0:00

Had and Spoke.

0:03

Audio Collective. Hi,

0:08

I'm Patrick Cox and this is Subtitle. Stories

0:10

about languages and the people who speak

0:12

them. We're a co-production of Quiet

0:15

Juice and the Linguistic Society

0:17

of America.

0:23

Over much of the 19th century, some

0:25

members of the U.S. Congress would rail against

0:27

the invasion of a certain

0:29

group of immigrants who'd settled in large

0:32

numbers in many parts of the country. People

0:34

who just wouldn't fit in, didn't

0:37

understand the American way of life. Their

0:40

culture was alien, their food

0:42

strange, and their language,

0:45

well they continued using it. They

0:47

refused to learn English. You

0:51

know who I'm talking about.

0:53

Germans.

0:56

Despite all of the accusations and

0:58

despite two world wars with Americans

1:00

and Germans on opposite sides, Germans

1:03

did find a way to fit in to American society.

1:06

And their descendants, well they did okay

1:09

for themselves too, to name a few.

1:11

Dwight Eisenhower, John Steinbeck,

1:14

Grace Kelly, Jennifer Lawrence. Not

1:17

too shabby.

1:18

There are German-American communities all over

1:21

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas.

1:24

But there are especially large

1:26

concentrations right in the middle of the country,

1:29

in Kansas and Missouri. That's

1:31

maybe why the German language

1:34

stuck around there for so long.

1:35

In fact, if you seek German out,

1:38

it's still there. That's

1:40

what Suzanne Hogan did. She

1:42

hosts the podcast A People's History

1:45

of Kansas City. It's a production of

1:47

public radio station KCUR.

1:50

Suzanne spent some time with a group of linguists

1:53

and a bunch of German heritage speakers.

1:56

This is their story.

2:29

And

4:00

they played a big role in shaping our communities

4:02

today. But the language they

4:05

brought with them, their unique dialects,

4:07

are fading into the past. Why

4:10

is this happening? What happens

4:12

to people when they lose their language? How

4:14

does how we talk shape

4:16

who we are? If you want to hear German the

4:19

way it is in our textbooks, you have to listen to

4:21

it now. Luckily, there are some people out there who

4:23

are exploring these questions. I

4:26

went on a trip with some linguistic researchers

4:28

from the University of Kansas to visit

4:30

some old-timers who are trying to keep their unique

4:33

German dialect alive. Professor

4:35

Bill Kiel and a couple of his assistants

4:38

drove me to Cole Camp, Missouri, a

4:40

town with a little over a thousand people about

4:42

two

4:42

hours southeast from Kansas City. That's

4:45

new, isn't it?

4:47

A wave of German immigrants, mostly

4:49

from northern Germany near Bremen and

4:51

Hamburg, settled in the Cole Camp

4:53

area in the 1830s. And

4:55

with them, they brought their farming skills, strong

4:58

work ethic, and low German language,

5:01

or what's called Plattdeutsch.

5:01

Longer teeth. Longer

5:04

teeth. Yeah. Long time? It's like platter.

5:06

You're too. I'm Suzanne. Hi. Hi,

5:09

Suzanne. Nice to meet you.

5:11

We're here to meet Neil Heimsaas. Neil

5:13

is like the glue of Cole Camp's Plattdeutsch-speaking

5:16

community. Neil, Professor Bill

5:18

Kiel and his research team go back a ways.

5:21

The same group came out to pay Neil a visit almost

5:24

ten years ago. And immediately, there's

5:26

kind of this family reunion vibe

5:28

happening. With all the catching up, jokes,

5:30

and stories, Neil invites us inside

5:33

his painting studio, which is right off the

5:35

main

5:35

strip in town. Thank you

5:38

so much. Yes. Glad you're

5:40

here.

5:41

Neil is 85. He's

5:43

a retired illustrator

5:44

for the Forest Service. The

5:47

walls of his studio are covered

5:49

with his paintings.

5:50

At a table in the center of the studio

5:53

sits one of Neil's old friends, Jean

5:55

Beckman, with guitar in hand. They

5:58

both used to run a load of music.

7:55

and

8:00

Platt-Deutsch and they really like to tell

8:02

Professor Keel about all the things their

8:04

parents used to say when they were growing

8:06

up. Have you heard of, hey it's

8:08

so cloak-kicking, cat and sheep in business

8:11

right now? Ahhh! He

8:14

is so smart he can

8:16

smell cat poop in the dark.

8:18

That's very smart.

8:22

And even though I don't speak low German, I'm

8:25

able

8:25

to pick up on some of it. Sheep. Sheep.

8:28

Can you imagine what that is in English?

8:30

Ahh shit. Yeah.

8:32

Are

8:33

there any questions that you guys know

8:35

or have heard before? A few,

8:37

but a lot of this is unique. We

8:39

had so much fun with the language

8:42

over the years. It was wonderful. But

8:45

it's really disappearing. Would

8:47

your grandkids get that joke or understand

8:50

it? Oh god no, not even my kids. No.

8:53

Neil hosts monthly low German speaking

8:55

groups at a restaurant in town where folks

8:58

get to gather and speak the dialect and

9:00

play cards. He's proud to say that

9:02

they have almost 25 members.

9:04

But he wishes there were more and

9:07

none of the members are very young. The language

9:10

is the heart and soul of the immigrant

9:12

community. It's the glue that

9:14

holds their whole culture together.

9:16

So Professor Bill Kiel, the head of the

9:18

research team that took me to coal camp,

9:21

has been with the German Studies Department

9:23

at the University of Kansas for nearly 30 years.

9:26

They may try to keep

9:28

cuisine, special

9:31

foods going, they may have festivals

9:34

that they'll celebrate, but without that

9:36

language,

9:37

really the core of that

9:40

culture is decimated. And

9:43

the thing is, when you talk about

9:44

the German language in the Midwest,

9:47

you're talking about a whole lot of very

9:49

different dialects. And that goes

9:52

way back. Before unification

9:54

in 1871, there was no nation known as Germany.

11:49

who

12:00

came to the U.S. chose to settle in

12:02

Missouri. Even though Missouri maybe

12:04

wasn't everything dude instead it was, the

12:07

new settlers got to work developing

12:09

land for farming and establishing townships.

12:12

Now this was that era right before the

12:14

civil

12:15

war.

12:16

Germans in Missouri were mostly against

12:18

slavery. In fact, in Cole Camp where

12:21

Neil and Jean grew up, Confederate

12:23

soldiers attacked and killed some German

12:25

residents in the middle of the night because

12:28

they were siding with the Union. Also

12:30

leading up to the civil war, Kansas becomes

12:32

a state in 1861. And

12:35

then the Homestead Act is passed in 1862, which

12:38

opened up and incentivized more

12:40

land for settlement. So lots

12:42

of Germans settled there too. Professor

12:45

Bilkeel.

12:45

People came to Kansas

12:48

in the 19th century and even

12:50

to this day from various

12:52

parts of the German speaking world and

12:54

brought their native

12:57

local dialects with them. People from

12:59

Russia, the Volga Germans or the

13:01

Mennonites.

13:01

You can see the immigrant influence

13:03

on Kansas if you look at a map of the state

13:06

with small towns called Bremen, Stuttgart

13:09

and Bern. For the past 30 plus

13:11

years, Professor Kil has been going to

13:13

all these communities across Kansas

13:15

and Missouri to track and document

13:18

the different German dialects people are

13:20

speaking there. Here's an example

13:22

of three different people he's interviewed

13:24

who are all saying the same sentence.

13:27

The times are bad. The two

13:29

of them slide.

13:30

Often very flexible.

13:33

You see the years pass. What

13:35

you just heard were three very good

13:38

examples of a low

13:40

German, a middle German

13:42

and an upper German dialect.

13:44

There are pockets of all these different

13:46

dialects all across Kansas and

13:49

Missouri. And as you can hear, a simple

13:52

sentence like saying the times are bad

13:54

can sound really different depending

13:56

on which dialect you speak. The two

13:59

of them slide.

15:57

English-speaking

16:00

immigrant group in America. There

16:03

used to be over 1,000 German newspapers,

16:06

with lots of them in Missouri and Kansas.

16:08

Now, according to the US Census, of

16:11

the 44 million people who claim

16:13

German ancestry, only 2% of those

16:16

people speak the language. A

16:19

lot of people blame the loss of the language

16:21

on anti-German discrimination around

16:23

World War I and II, which could

16:25

have played a factor. But Professor Keel

16:27

says he thinks it's been more of a gradual

16:30

process that has to do with changes in education

16:33

and people becoming less isolated,

16:35

because most of the people he

16:37

interviews, who still speak their dialect,

16:40

are in their 80s and 90s.

16:42

Why are they now the last generation?

16:44

Well, if you look at some of the social

16:47

aspects of the United States, Kansas,

16:50

Missouri, the Model T is introduced

16:52

in 1908.

16:54

Our system of paved roads

16:56

gets going in the 1920s and 30s. High

16:59

school education becomes a major

17:01

factor in the between

17:04

the two wars. Prior to World War

17:06

I, very few people completed high

17:08

school.

17:09

Professor Keel loves to bring up the

17:11

one-counter example.

17:12

The big exception are,

17:14

of course, our friends the Old Order Amish.

17:17

No cars, don't go to school past

17:19

eighth grade, stay on the farm, and

17:21

speak Dutch.

17:23

In the past decade alone, the Amish

17:25

population in Kansas has more

17:27

than doubled.

17:28

In Missouri, it's quadrupled.

17:31

Those populations are not in danger

17:33

of losing their dialects. Neil

17:36

Heimsteuss in Cold Camp, Missouri, is

17:38

kind of an example of a rare thing.

17:41

Though he didn't pass the language down to his

17:43

kids, he's a guy who's actively trying

17:45

to keep the dialect alive and relevant

17:48

in his community. It's something that's

17:50

not so common in other places. And

17:52

that's why Professor Keel wanted me to come

17:54

along on their trip so I can meet Neil

17:56

and Jean and get to know them

17:58

myself and learn how to do it.

17:59

they're keeping a dying tradition alive.

18:03

Ain't way they're a yoga

18:06

in the Mexico.

18:09

This old couple lived on a farm and

18:11

they had 10

18:11

kids. Neil loves

18:13

to tell

18:13

this joke. And the old man said,

18:15

mama that kind of on gone. We

18:17

have time Kim. That

18:19

can't go on. We can't

18:21

have any more children.

18:23

The husband has counted it out

18:25

and is explaining his idea for

18:28

a possible solution to his wife.

18:30

Yeh to my comfort Kent.

18:32

Every May we get a child. So

18:36

that made that pizet in August.

18:39

That means it happens in August. So

18:43

new mama,

18:44

Yeh to your

18:47

ex slop in the sheen in August.

18:51

I will sleep in the barn in August.

18:54

And she says, Yeh

18:56

Papa then do mates that that

18:58

human died. Papa if you think that

19:00

will really help, then slop it

19:03

door oak. Then I'll sleep there too.

19:07

But this isn't

19:08

just about fun and jokes. Professor

19:11

Kiel and his research assistants also

19:13

made the trip back to Cole Camp so

19:15

they could gather more interviews for

19:17

the archive.

19:18

They set up recording equipment and have

19:21

Gene Beckman, our guitar player, and

19:23

Neil's wife Marilyn, who's also

19:25

from Cole Camp, read a series of

19:27

sentences.

19:29

Okay, so we're starting. Would you just

19:31

state your name and your birth date

19:33

please? Okay, I'm Eugene

19:36

Beckman. My birthday is June 23rd, 1934. Can

19:40

you say it in German? Not George. Eben,

19:42

Gebohen and Junie, Drei

19:44

and 20, Nägteinhundren,

19:46

Veyendärte. Okay, and what

19:48

town are you from? Eben,

19:51

Kolkämp, Missouri. Okay.

19:53

And then some fun stuff starts

19:55

to happen. I remember the first time

19:57

we heard the German word for squirrel.

20:00

We'd

20:00

never heard it before. Okay, what do you guys call

20:02

them?

20:03

Squaddle. We

20:06

angle them. We Americanize

20:08

those type of things. Did you have any

20:11

kind of plot word for a squirrel? Squaddle.

20:14

The Saxons in Perry County at Oak

20:16

Rabbits. Oak Rabbits. Isn't

20:19

that wild? I've asked people

20:21

in Germany and they've never heard that. We

20:23

have tons of those, you know,

20:26

that are just our own diet, you know. Coal

20:28

camp, black is what we call it.

20:30

And like, sure, we

20:32

say, sure. I tell you, the Germans

20:34

laughed at us when we'd say, sure. You

20:37

know, like, sure, sure. He'll go, sure. And they

20:39

just...

20:40

All things that make their dialect, their

20:43

coal camp plot, unique. Neil

20:45

and Marilyn have both taken a few trips back

20:48

to where their family came from in Germany and

20:50

Austria to make connections and map

20:52

out their family tree. Coal camp

20:54

as a town has also been trying to maintain

20:56

a strong German identity. The

20:59

town strip on Main has some German themed shops

21:01

and they host an Oktoberfest every

21:03

year. Back in 1989,

21:06

when the town celebrated its 150th anniversary,

21:09

a German dance group came all

21:11

the way over just for the festivities. Neil

21:14

and Jean's low German theater performed. Neil

21:16

remembers it was a time when plateaued speakers

21:19

became really proud of their

21:20

language. We had people here

21:22

who were kind of ashamed that they

21:25

were German because of the Second World War. All

21:27

of a sudden they were proud to take the top German.

21:30

For the celebration, Neil and Marilyn

21:32

helped publish The Little Red History Book,

21:35

a book that tells the German immigration

21:37

story

21:37

of the town.

21:39

That project is actually how they met

21:41

and fell in love. And just

21:44

a few years ago, Neil and Marilyn created

21:46

a German immigrant memorial next

21:48

to Neil's studio. For

21:50

an immigrant community and their descendants

21:52

trying to keep their story alive, history

21:55

books and memorials have their place. But

21:58

there's nothing like food, drinks, and food. and

22:00

song, living history. After

22:02

a long day of telling stories and doing research,

22:05

we decided to head to a restaurant called the

22:07

German Table for a Meal.

22:12

Sam Cole has been running the restaurant

22:14

for eight years.

22:16

The original German restaurant of Cole Camp

22:18

that was around when she was a kid shut

22:20

down, and she realized that Cole

22:22

Camp had to have a German restaurant,

22:25

so she decided to start one back up again.

22:28

But she got a lot of help from the community.

22:30

Neil actually was my guinea pig

22:32

whenever I was testing my recipes, making

22:35

sure I had him right. When I was learning, I'd call

22:37

him, I want to hear you home, I want to bring you something, try.

22:40

He'd say, no, that's not right. It needs this red wine

22:42

or it needs this. So a lot of

22:44

the credit goes to Neil for

22:46

my recipe. So I hope you like him. If you don't like him,

22:48

it's blame Neil.

22:50

It's Neil's fault.

22:54

We

22:54

order schnitzel, potato pancakes.

22:57

Neil really likes the Reuben soup, and

22:59

it all tastes great. So good job,

23:01

Neil and Sam.

23:02

And no meal is complete, of course, without

23:04

a cold German

23:05

beer and some apple schnitzel.

23:26

I just wanted

23:29

to introduce you to Wild

23:31

Bill Kiel, Professor.

23:33

I don't know where you got that Wild Bill.

23:35

As more and more of Neil's friends start

23:37

to come into the restaurant, it quickly

23:39

becomes clear that we aren't just

23:42

here for dinner.

23:43

Neil has arranged for a surprise

23:45

performance. He's invited the Cole Camp

23:48

German singers to perform some songs

23:50

for us. We're going to sing

23:52

for you one of our

23:55

our national anthem of Cole

23:57

Camp in honor of our...

24:00

It came from North Germany. We

24:03

love the song, Vodenorsse

24:06

Velens, sung in low German.

24:13

Vodenorsse

24:16

Velen, wätner nannenstra.

24:19

It's like one of those moments where

24:22

you feel like you're living in

24:24

a musical. Do

24:25

you ever have those? As

24:27

if on cue, Professor Keel and

24:29

the restaurant owner Sam join

24:31

in, singing along. Professor

24:33

Keel even starts to dance.

24:38

As the day winds down and we start

24:40

to say goodbye, the question

24:43

that started this trip resurfaces

24:45

in my mind.

24:47

What do we lose when we lose

24:49

a language

24:49

or part of our culture? It's

24:52

really hard to put into words. But

24:55

it's easy to see and feel what we

24:57

gain when we hold on to it and share

24:59

it. By

25:00

the end of the day, we all hug, say

25:03

goodbye, and promise to keep in touch. Bill

25:06

and his research assistants will take all

25:08

their recordings and archive them. They

25:10

hope to get a Missouri dialect map online

25:13

in the future. But these researchers

25:15

are technically retired and are doing

25:17

this for fun now. Professor Keel

25:19

retired from KU at the end of last

25:22

year, which will make this ongoing

25:24

project of documenting all this even

25:26

more than it has already been, a labor

25:29

of love.

25:29

I've made countless,

25:32

I'll say, friends or people

25:36

that I've come to know, and

25:38

many of them have now passed away.

25:42

It's a bittersweet kind of a situation.

25:46

Really, when it comes down to it, it's not

25:48

up to Professor Keel or research to

25:50

keep language alive, though it's great

25:52

that they are documenting it. It's

25:54

up to people to keep their dialects alive,

25:57

people like Neil Henson and their families.